Comparing Poets' Attitudes to Conflict in Mametz Wood by Owen Sheers and Futility by Wilfred Owen.

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Introduction

﻿Compare the poets? attitude to conflict in ?Futility? and one other poem The poem ?Futility? by Wilfred Owen deals with the speaker?s desperation after the experience of death on the battlefield which leads him to question the sense of life as well as sense of creation in general. At the beginning, the whole situation is vague for the reader. The verbal indistinctness points to the role of the poem attributes by using only words of someone who is immediately involved in the situation and affected by it. The reader has to try and work things out, to try to understand the speaker's inside and outside situation, and see through his verbal reaction to understand the poem itself. This is shown as at the beginning of poem, he starts with an imperative of "Move him into the sun-" (line 1). The speaker starts his speech by addressing the people who are beside him and the cesura at the end of the line leads on so that after it, he speaks to himself. ...read more.

Middle

The ?sun? which is mentioned in line 1 is also seen to be a ?giver of life? ? possible symbolising God, as he wrote in line 12, ?Was it for this clay grew tall?? this has connotations with the bible which said that man was made from the earth, and clay is from the earth. The ?whispering of fields unsown? signifies a young life with great potential being cut short ? and the reality that he will not be returning back home, a place where he was comfortable and satisfied, to complete the rest of his life, as it has been lost in such meaningless conflict, this is Wilfred Owen?s attitude to conflict. The other poem which I have chosen is called ?Mametz Wood? by Owen Sheers. It was written about the events of when farmers digging a field in preparation for planting and in so, bones of corpses from the Battle of the Somme are discovered. ...read more.

Conclusion

In line 4 and 5, ?A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade, the relic of a finger, the blown? also is another example of memories, as these are body parts of a person and it must be significant as the finger is also described as a ?relic?. Metaphorical vocabulary is used throughout the poem, such as ?a wound working a foreign body to the surface to the skin? on line 12. This phrase creates a vivid image in the minds of the reader. The setting of Mametz Wood is different to that of Futility, as it set in the years long after the war, rather than during the conflict, as it is bones that are being found not the actual corpse of a soldier. Both poems deals with a depressing subject thus emotive language has been used throughout both, and by using this emotive language you can tell that great thought and respect has been put into these two pieces with similar attitudes to conflict, of respecting the death of unnecessary deaths which conflict has caused. ...read more.

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